Playing with weight

[bunbuns]

Hi I have been playing piano for almost a year now and my teacher says that when you play your suppose to use your weight and I don't know how. I don't always have a light touch when I play so I don't understand what she means. Does anyone know how to use your whole body weight when you play? I have tried leaning forward and like glueing my arms to my sides so when I lean it pushes them down. I have no clue! =[ My hands are extremely tired all the time and I was wondering if by playing with your weight they can become less tired? Does anyone know the exact meaning using your body weight when you play. I use my strength when I need to make loud sounds I dont understand what else I need to do. Thanks everyone

[nomis]

You should really ask your teacher...

Anyway, using weight is important for playing the piano, particularly for loud chords, as you can't really generate enough volume by just using the muscles in your forearms i.e. the muscles that control your fingers. It's likely that you're really tense when you're playing piano, hence you become tired more quickly. To get a feel for using weight, go to your piano and lift your arm quite high. Completely relax your arm, and let your arm just fall and try to fall "through" the keyboard. Congratulations, you are using the force of weight! It doesn't take much effort. When you've grasped this idea, apply to playing the C major chord (C-E-G). Again, lift your arm again to a suitable height, let it drop, but just before your fingers touch the keys, make sure they are firm. The result is a loud, strong chord. Once you have mastered this, you can apply it to your playing, and you don't have to lift your hand very high at all. Lastly, I found the following post on another forum, and it might be quite illuminating:

A relaxed wrist and using the weight on your your fingers to depress keys rather than actually pushing or "slapping" the keys is key to piano technique (and tone quality, of course). It's hard to explain what I mean by "weight" in text, but try this... put the 5 fingers of one (or both hands) on 5 consecutive white keys. Completely relax all muscle tension everywhere, and depress a key with your 1 or 5 finger. Now, slowly, play the keys back and forth but without lifting any of your fingers off of the keys. If you're relaxed, you'll notice that your arm-weight is what depresses the keys, not any muscle movement in the actual fingers. And you'll notice that rather than "pushing" each key with each finger, you're really only transferring weight from one finger to another. This concept of weight on the fingers (which mind you, requires no finger "strength" since the bone structure is plenty strong to support the weight) is key to scaling technique and tone quality (you should notice a less harsh and fuller tone).

It's impossible to play a scale extremely fast if you're worrying about pushing every single key - but if you're simply transferring weight from finger to finger to move up and down the scale, you see the scale as one big movement (as opposed to many isolated mvoements), and it becomes quite easy to play quickly. This, of course, requires a completely relaxed wrist, and the knowledge that different hand positions work differently for different people. For example, when I play a scale with my right hand, my elbow kind of makes one circular motion. As I go up the scale, my elbow sits low, and slowly moves away from my body, then when I hit the top note it sticks out to my right more so that my fingertips are almost completely facing the left side of the piano, and I go back to the bottom of the scale. It's important to experiment.

Anyway, those are just some important concepts regarding making your technique/tone quality better, which are not myths.

[bunbuns]

omg thanks for your help! I feel it already. I never really notied how forced I played before and how tense my hands got. All sudden it feels like playing just got a little easier for me. Droping  your hands on the keys really helped me understand.

[thierry13]

And too, important thing, never use a shoulder movement, to force it. Only a forearm one. You will get a better sound like this.